Some of the most successful scenes move the narrative along because of their *consequences* – take the bit in Grosse Pointe Blank where Martin fights with hitman at his school, then is discovered standing over the corpse. Action followed by reaction. Compare this with your standard blockbuster film where there is no reason for the fight other than the loser being in the way – cut out the fight and you lose nothing apart from a few minutes of screen time.

When director and fight choreographer work in harmony, the scenes can be breathtaking – even for US-made films. Equilibrium can hold its own against a lot of HK movies with its energetic fight scenes.

And I agree with you 100% about the fight scenes.

My local cinemaplex is devoid of big-box restaurants. Of course, it’s devoid of *any* restaurants, but at least you aren’t tempted to eat at PF Changs. And why on earth did you have to eat in the same place that you saw the movie? You all drove there, right? Why not drive someplace else to eat first?

Rob, you forgot to finish that sentence. It should have read:

The fight scenes were clipped deliberately to compensate for poor film making (specifically fight filming) skills.

This is getting irratatingly common in recent action movies/TV shows. They generally compound this sin by shooting the scene so dark that you only see flashes of action that I hummingbird would have a hard time catching.

–Mark

There were a few bits where it made sense for the shots to jump in and out. But for the most part I stand by my opinion. Batman certainly isn’t the only film to be guilty of this. I can’t think of the last action film I’ve seen where the fights were well shot. HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS maybe.

That was what the “choppy” editing was attempting to convey. Strange that it’s so obvious to me and so non-obvious to most other folks.

Oh well. To each her own.

Second of all, you have to compare like to like. This is a summer movie. It’s a summer _comic book_ movie. I agree with some of the specific criticisms you have. It was a bit too long, and the fight scene choreography suffers from the “what the hell is going on?” camerawork popularized by _Gladiator_. But on the whole, those are pretty minor complaints. Consider watching this movie as compared to being forced to sit through Ang Lee’s _The Hulk_, or Ben Affleck’s _Daredevil_. Or _Elektra_. Any of which I might gnaw my own leg off in order to escape.

I liked _Batman Begins_ more than the Keaton movies, and certainly more than the Joel Schumacher abortions that Zacharek adores (nipples on the body armor. NIPPLES ON THE BODY ARMOR.) Out of all the Batman movies, this one comes the closest to Frank Miller’s bleak vision in _The Dark Knight Returns_, which really has become, through a strange act of transubstantiation, the canonical representation of the Batman archetype.